Addressed to Lenora.
Written by my mother.
She had apparently given it to Enoch’s attorney for safekeeping while deciding whether to send it.
Then illness had overtaken her.
The lawyer handling Enoch’s old private files had died.
The sealed documents disappeared into archival storage.
Until Thad’s appeal forced the trust company to review everything.
I unfolded the letter.
It began:
Dear Mother,
That was all I managed before breaking.
Lenora moved beside me.
She put her arms around my shoulders.
And together, the two women who had spent years mourning the same person from opposite sides of a secret finally read Claire’s letter.
My mother wrote that she had never hated Lenora.
She wrote that becoming a mother herself had changed the way she understood a frightened seventeen-year-old girl.
She wrote about me.
My birth.
My first day of school.
My obsession with strawberry ice cream.
My graduation.
She enclosed a photograph of me at eight years old with two missing front teeth.
At the bottom she wrote:
If I find the courage to meet you, I want you to know one thing before we do. You have a granddaughter named Coraly. She is stubborn, loyal, far too willing to forgive people, and she is the best thing that ever happened to me. If you meet her someday, please love her before she learns to be afraid of you.
I could no longer see the page through my tears.
Lenora pressed her forehead against mine.
